Starting with a market on Hartford’s New Britain Avenue, Remo Santilli, his wife, and sons, have been in the grocery business for more than 20 years. To the customers in front of the counter, their stores are known for fresh foods and good cuts of meat. But to the suppliers coming in the back door, they’re known more for the trail of debt they’ve incurred.
The most recent closing, in January, was of Santilli’s Epicure Market, a fine foods store in Farmington, soon to be replaced by a new wine and liquor store.
Santilli, reached at home, said the location of that store had been advantageous but that the rent had been too high.
“It was a good store, but it was expensive,” he said from his Wethersfield home in a brief interview.
Despite its closing, he said he hoped to open yet another store, the location of which he would not say.
“We’re going to announce something soon,” he said.
First, though, Santilli will have to find distributors, landlords and workmen willing to do business with him. Unpaid bills have popped up like dandelions along the way during Santilli’s stint opening stores, closing them, and moving in and out of bankruptcy. There are dozens of lawsuits on file in the state and federal court systems against Santilli, his wife, his children, and the various legal entities under which he’s run his string of supermarkets.
In 1997, he paid off $140,000 in unpaid city taxes before selling his namesake South End market. Still, the new owner discovered undisclosed debts, and Santilli took the place back months later. The location now has a C-Town grocery store.
But Santilli already had another store going in 1995, when he and a partner purchased the Phelps Crossing Shopping Center in Willington, for $1.2 million. He opened a 12,000 square foot market there, but that has since closed and the space is now empty.
In 1999 the grocer purchased Chester’s Market, in East Windsor, renaming it Santilli’s. But that business went to public auction under a liquidation sale in 2002.
When Santilli took over the Epicure market in Farmington, it was the model of a small independent grocer in a wealthy town. Under its previous owner, LaBonne’s, the store charged high prices, but provided wide selection and exceptional service. Under Santilli’s tenure, selection dwindled and the store lost much of its cache.
Like at its predecessor stores, the Epicure closing involves piles of unpaid bills. Three food distributors, owed money by Santilli, have placed liens on his family’s house in Wethersfield.
Thousands Owed
United Natural Foods, a large wholesaler of organic and natural foods, posted two liens totaling $9,207. Carvel Corp., makers of Carvel ice cream and frozen desserts, is owed $1,408. And Fowler & Hunting, a Hartford-based produce wholesaler, brought a lien of $30,000.
Even when creditors win judgment against Santilli, that doesn’t mean they actually get the money. Gary Saucier, president of Saucier Mechanical in Southington, won a $17,000 judgment last year for unpaid work at a Santilli market.
Remo Santilli “said he was a man of his word, but he wasn’t, at all,” said Saucier, who claimed that Santilli’s checks bounced.
The debts have led to lawsuits — many of them. A search of state legal records shows that Santilli himself, one of his companies or members of his family (who help operate the markets) have been sued more than 50 times. The plaintiffs are a who’s-who of suppliers and distributors to grocery stores and markets in the state and region, including Sardilli Produce, a Hartford produce retailer, and Byrne Dairy, an East Coast wholesaler of milk, cheeses and yogurt.
“They don’t pay,” said Ina Bomze, president of Fabled Foods, an artisan bread seller in Deep River. Bomze sued the Santilli family in 2004 over $16,000 in unpaid bills. She has since stopped doing business with them.
“They weren’t doing very well,” she said.
But Santilli dismissed the liens and said business would continue.
“Everyone in business owes people money,” he explained. He added that he would have news of the new store shortly.
“Call me in a month and a half.”
